Antennas have become a necessary and critical component of all personal electronic devices, microwave and satellite communication systems, radar systems and military surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. In many of these systems, it is required to perform a multitude of functions across several frequency bands and operating bandwidths. In many cases, these requirements cannot be served by any single antenna but rather require the use of multiple antennas of varying form factors and geometries. This results in an increase in fabrication costs, system weight, system volume, and resources required for maintenance/repair.
Reconfigurable antennas modify their geometry and behavior to adapt to changes in environmental conditions or systems requirements, such as enhanced bandwidth, change in operating frequency, etc. For example, reconfigurable antennas can provide versatility to wireless devices due to their ability to dynamically change their operating frequency, bandwidth, aperture area, etc. while keeping their form-factor more or less constant.
RF reconfigurability of an antenna is of great interest in the field of wireless communications particularly for multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) systems and cognitive radio applications. RF reconfigurability conceptually means to dynamically alter the physical structure of the antenna by connecting and/or disconnecting different parts of the antenna structure which interact with its radiation properties and thereby alters its RF response.